Telling it Like it Is
By David Shamah, The
Once, they were gravediggers, who buried
people in the graveyard. That scared people off, so they turned themselves into
undertakers, who conducted their business in cemeteries. But even with that
newfound respectability, they still weren't getting invited to cocktail
parties. So, they adopted a new title – that of a "funeral director,"
who manages – of all things – a "memorial park."
One of the most annoying things about today's
world has got to be the triumph of euphemism. People don't get fired anymore –
they just get "laid off," or "downsized," or, in the latest
insult to the intelligence, "rightsized." People
don’t get killed in terrorist attacks – they become "casualties," and
the terrorists carrying out the attacks themselves have been reinvented as
"guerillas," "militants," or, lately,
"insurgents." A janitor is a "custodian," who collects
garbage – sorry, "refuse" - which was formerly taken by the garbageman to the dump, but is nowadays taken by the
"sanitation worker" to the "landfill." It's enough to make
you run to the bathroom – I mean "restroom" – and vomit (have
"motion discomfort sickness").
Nothing is called by its real name anymore.
In an excellent book I once read on the subject of social class (called,
ironically, Class, by Paul Fussell - see http://wesclark.com/am/class.html),
the author says that this "terminology inflation" is a way to gussy
up unpleasant facts, among other things. Anything controversial or challenging
is thus disposed of in short order – no point in frightening the public, who
might balk and not read a newspaper or watch a news program that tells it like
it is. If people want to be lulled into a false sense of
well-being, why not – especially if it prevents "unstable elements" (aka nuts) from "going postal" (going out on a
shoot 'em up). The media takes this to
ridiculous levels, making up nice sounding terms for all sorts of things
relating to the "dark side" of life.
The problem with this method of looking at
life, though, is that it seeps down into all levels of society. Wishy-washiness
becomes its own reward, as people get into the habit of avoiding difficult
situations, problems, subjects, and activities. The more people avoid tough
jobs, the easier it is to keep ducking these tasks – until the bill has to be
paid. But there's plenty of time for that – heaven (or "the other
place," as the genteel put it) can wait.
There are many opinions among sociologists of
when this trend began, but all agree that it has accelerated sharply with the
rise of television. It's understandable that people would not want too much
"reality" (I don’t mean phony "reality TV" contests) like
war, hate and rioting, and that viewers have a tendency to switch off things
that make them uncomfortable, but when they demand that TV broadcasters adjust
the news so that they can avoid having to think about difficult issues, it
becomes a way of life, and they tend to expand that coping methodology to other
areas of life. And like with so many other social policies that have affect
society in ways that nobody could have imagined, this TV induced avoidance
thing has changed some basic features of our world.
Like education. I know it's not my
imagination, because I see the work my kids are coming home from school with
(when they even have homework, another symptom of the problem). I can't say
it's that much easier than the work I did when I was a kid – but it's certainly
not any more advanced. Which is part of the problem; the world has progressed
so much technologically in the past 30 or so years you would expect that the
schools would be training kids in advanced scientific theory or quantum physics
in elementary school! Instead, they're still learning "math logic"
and playing with "bedidim" (any parent of
younger kids knows what I'm talking about).
Now how are kids supposed to compete on the
job market if they're still doing basic science and math in junior high, not to
mention high school? It's not like they're dumb; any kid with even moderate
motivation seems to be capable of figuring out the most complicated video games.
It's obvious we're not challenging them enough.
So why doesn't the average school curriculum
cover difficult subjects like advanced math? Because – who's going to help them
with their homework? Who's going to teach the stuff? If the kids are to be
taught, that means someone has to teach the stuff, which means teachers have to
learn the material. The kids can do it – it's the adults, from policymakers
down to teachers and parents, who don’t have the stomach for math! Lots of
people have lots of complaints about the schools for lots of reasons, but this
is one that most of us don't even think about it. Which is a shame, because it
goes to the very essence of what schools are supposed to do – prepare kids for
the future by letting them learn basic ideas and concepts they are going to
need later in life in order to get good jobs and become contributing members of
society.
We have to face it; without math – especially
algebra - our kids ain't going anywhere. Getting a
job in an advanced technological society makes math more important than ever. If
the schools won't do the job, we have to do it ourselves. But fortunately,
there is help out there – there is a first class math program you can download
for free, which will help your kids learn algebra, basic and advanced, and help
give them the building blocks they need to succeed in the future.
If you have a kid in junior high or high
school, you should encourage him/her – and his/her teacher – to download Maxima
(http://maxima.sourceforge.net), an advanced algebra computation program loaded
with functions and computations that will bring out the best in a budding
mathematician. Maxima is a computer algebra program, and computer algebra, in
which a PC processor is used to figure out advanced computations and problems,
is fast becoming the bedrock of science and engineering today. Anybody – maybe
you or your kids - looking for a career in hi-tech in the coming years is going
to have to know this stuff, or at least know enough about it to understand the
basic concepts and/or discuss it intelligently. Math is far more important than
most of us give it credit for, as Dr. Math will tell you (http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.why.math.html).
Maxima is without question sophisticated, meant for
university level work; but if you want your kids to be able to handle this
stuff later on, they have to get an idea of how it works now. It has all the
advanced built-in functions a math program needs, can compute strings, linear
and graphic problems, "straight" algebra using variables, symbols,
and algorithms, and can be used for everything from basic computation to logarithmic
calculation, trigonometry, and calculus – not to mention computer programming. You
might not need or be able to use all the functions, but Maxima can do plain
addition/subtraction and multiplication/division – using algebraic form, which
will "get you into the mood" of using advanced math form. Maxima has
a help file, and there are numerous Web pages dedicated to the program and to
the concepts involved in computer math (links are on the home page and on http://www.math.psu.edu/glasner).
It all sounds so scary, doesn’t it? All these
high level math concepts make you want to run and hide – or better, turn on the
TV and watch a sitcom! Don't think the kids haven’t picked up on this; they,
too, flee from the tough stuff, and later, you and they will be writing angry
letters to the editor about how the schools "failed" the kids by not
teaching them what they needed to know to get ahead of life. Avoiding calling
less than pleasant things by their real names is all well and good, but don't
let that avoidance get in the way of the things that really matter – like your
kids' learning math in order to get ahead.
ds@newzgeek.com